International Migration: Trends, Determinants, and Policy Effects

This paper explores the concept of migration, and its causes and effects, with a focus on international migration. Various journal articles, reports, and policy documents are reviewed to address the controversies concerning the concept and key issues of migration. The paper indicates that migration is not only a contested concept, but migration research has resulted in different outcomes. It is mainly affected by personal, socio-economic, and political factors associated with the origin and host countries. Similarly, scholars have been asking the question, “who is a migrant?” for decades without a definite answer. It is also important to consider “what would happen after migrants obtain host country citizenship”: would they continue to be migrants, the host countries’ citizens, or both? This paper contributes to advancing our knowledge and broadening our understanding of the concept of migration and key issues associated with it. It also serves as a base for further discussion.

New foundations for a sustainable global society, Madrid: CSIC, 2021

International migration is a highly complex and global phenomenon, an ideologically charged and polarizing topic of enormous symbolic and political relevance, a phenomenon that requires an interdisciplinary approach from both a descriptive as well as normative perspective. Migratory flows have increased and are incrementally caused by armed conflicts or climate change, as well as by acute global inequalities. Given that the causes and implications of migration exceeds state limits a comprehensive study needs to abandon “methodological nationalism”. The economic and social integration of the migrant population is a complex challenge, but the opportunities it opens up are also manifold: migration drives economic growth, connects different cultures, and contributes to international development.

In the context of the contemporary globalized world, international migration gained an increasing interest among social sciences scholars. Which are the main drivers of international migration? Who benefits more from migration: the host or the origin countries or communities? Which is the relationship between migration and social stratification or inequality? What is changing in the identity register for both migrants and natives in social contexts with significant communities of immigrants? Is there any relationship between migration and the new wave of terrorism in Europe? These are only some of the main questions which request the academic community's attention and intricate answers. From this perspective, The Routledge International Handbook of Migration Studies edited by Steven Gold and Stephanie Nawyn is an excellent up to date introduction in a range of topics related to migration studies and a useful tool for scholars interested in economic, cultural and social processes linked to international migration. The Handbook is organized in nine distinct parts covering theoretical and methodological aspects of several dimensions of migration phenomenon. This book review constitutes a brief overview on each of these parts aiming to emphasize some of the most interesting chapters of the handbook. Unauthenticated Download Date | 3/5/15 10:15 PM

Panorama Internacional FEE brings to the debate, in its third edition, the issue of international migration. The phenomenon of human migration has been recurrent in the evolutionary process of societies. Its dimensions, its causes and its effects lie in the fields of politics, economics, religion, the history of climate change, etc. The complexity of the issue is extremely important for the understanding of other historical, political, economic and social phenomena. How can one understand, for example, the formation of national states and their political and economic systems throughout history without taking into account the role of migration flows in the context of all these processes? Given the complexity inherent to the dynamics of migration movements, assigning Global migrations: a constant challenge for the international community |

Geoforum , 2019

Migration, like birth and death, is a pattern found in all human populations, even though in some periods – like the one we are living through – it is perceived as a crisis . But why does migration happen in the first place? Why is it sometimes perceived positively and other times negatively? How do governments manage migration and its associated challenges? This article identifies various demographic drivers of population movement, examines policy responses of different governments, and explores their outcomes in different places . First we review the classic demographic transition model, which shows the interaction of fertility, mortality and socio-economic ‘modernisation’, absent of migration . Then we scrutinize the role of migration in key sections of this model .

RUDN Journal of Sociology, 2017

In the second half of the XX century, the humankind witnessed the insurmountable and irreversible power of globalization processes, which influence all spheres of social life and establish a global system of interdependency between countries and nations. Globalization within impetuous changes in global political, social and economic systems has determined dramatic shifts in the international migration processes that lead to the new stage of migration history. In nowadays globalized world, international migration has become a reality for almost all corners of the globe. The author considers features of the recent trends of international migration: the unprecedented growth of the international migration flows; the widening geography of international migration that involves nearly all countries of the world; qualitative changes in the structure of international migration flows; the key role of economic migration; the permanent growth and structural intricateness of irregular migration; the increasing scale and geographical widening of forced migration; the growing importance of international migration for the demographic development of the world, countries of both origin and destination. All these trends combined prove that the international migration patterns have become more complex. The author analyzes the legal framework of the international migration processes, and gives recommendations on the ways to improve the control and regulation of migration processes. Specific issues related to the social challenges of international migration are also discussed in the article. International migration has accelerated over the last fifty years. Globalization processes have set in motion vast and often uncontrolled international migration flows and, thus, turned the international migration into the most important global phenomena, which influences the world economy and international security. Today, more people live outside their countries of origin than ever before, and international migration has become much more diverse in terms of origins and destinations of migrants.

Specific learning outcomes: Knowledge: • Understanding human migration in historical and contemporary perspective • Becoming familiar with global migration trends, push and pull factors of worldwide migration flows, different migration typologies (e.g. regular and irregular, circular, transit and return migration) and migration fields of study (e.g. labour migration, forced migration, migration and development, migration and education, migration and gender, immigrant integration and citizenship) • Learning about the social consequences of migration for sending and receiving societies and about these societies’ responses to migration • Learning about migration actors, policies and legislation at different level of governance, old and new ethnic minorities as well as about specific tools to cope with discrimination and racism in a work-life perspective Skills: • Ability to grasp the breadth of the current migration phenomena as well as to differentiate between perceptions and reality of their extent • Ability to identify differences and similarities between migration flows and between societies’ responses to migration • Ability to deconstruct one’s own position in relation to migrants and ethnic minorities and thus to put oneself into “migrant shoes” Attitude: • Disposition to self-reflectiveness when working or being exposed to encounters with migrants and minorities • Appraisal of the opportunities and benefits of international migration for the individual and the society as a whole

Whilst the literature on international migration expands at a seemingly exponential rate, significant statements about the theorisation of migration are much less common; probably they are hindered by the increasing diversification of types of migration. This paper first reviews the various types of migration, and emphasises the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the study and theorisation of migration. In the main part of the paper I provide a personalised overview of theories of international migration, divided into the following sections: push-pull theory and the neoclassical approach; migration and development transitions; historical-structural and political economy models; the role of systems and networks; the 'new economics' of migration; and finally approaches based on the 'transnational turn' in migration studies. In the conclusion I point up some future challenges to theorising migration: the need to embed the study of migration within global processes of social, economic and political transformation and within the biographies of migrants' lifecourses; the importance of also explaining why people do not migrate, and the notion of access to mobility as a differentiating factor of class and inequality; and the relevance of existential and emotional dimensions of migration. The paper is explicitly aimed at a student audience and is intended as a primer to understanding some of the complexities and challenges of theorising migration.

International Migration Review, 2014

When the International Migration Review was established half a century ago, international migration was a peripheral area of research, and migration issues were far less prominent on policy agendas than they are today. This essay introduces the 50th Anniversary Issue of the International Migration Review and begins by identifying seven main areas of change in migration research and migration trends during the journal's lifetime. Subsequently, we examine changes in the geographical distribution of authorship of IMR articles. We also explore the IMR's current positioning in the scientific landscape by analyzing citation relationships with other journals. The ten articles that make up the body of the special issue seek to advance the research frontier on international migration, covering diverse areas of the IMR's thematic scope. We account for how the papers were selected and present each one. In the final section of the article, we look ahead and suggest new frontiers in international migration research. Among the research themes that we foresee as increasingly important are connections between migration and inequality, and the growth of migration flows that are driven by humanitarian crises, but not accommodated by the international refugee regime. *The views expressed are those of the authors and do not reflect those of the Federal Review Bank of Dallas or the Federal Reserve System.